So let’s see if I’ve got this right: In your cheat sheet for the August primary election, you said a candidate (Shoreline City Councilman Jesse Salomon) “****-ing sucks” (..) “We can’t even pretend he was any good.”– but you endorsed him anyway?

Over a candidate (State Senator Maralyn Chase) who has a longstanding history of strong progressive principles, votes and positions that you yourselves have historically supported?

You feebly endorsed a city councilmember (Salomon) for state senate because he said he hypothetically would have voted for a health care bill if he were in state office, and you vilified the sitting senator (Chase) who actually co-sponsored the bill in question—and incorrectly accuse her of not supporting the bill?

And you, who pride yourselves on being rude and obnoxious, cry foul when a candidate calls you “rude”?

What gives?

The August primary ended in basically a tie between Chase and Salomon, with less than 200 votes between them, Salomon finishing ahead. There’s clearly a battle afoot. And now, with your general election endorsements this week, you have continued your erratic attacks on Chase and your illogical support of her opponent, leaving many of us wondering: Whose side are you on?

The Stranger has been an edgy alternative voice in this (Boeing/Microsoft/Gates/ Starbucks/Vulcan/Amazon) company town for many years. I genuinely appreciate that. In the past, you have taken brave stances and covered important stories with some damn good writers (though you’ve also lost some along the way). You endorsed Kshama Sawant in 2013 (and me that same year — thank you for that). But lately, when it comes to endorsements, too often you’ve gotten it wrong. Obnoxiously, dangerously wrong.

Your treatment of Maralyn Chase is a case in point.

There was something rabidly irrational about your attack on Senator Chase in the primary election, especially considering you endorsed her in the past. Your backhanded endorsement of her opponent is equally senseless.

The truth is, Chase has been actively championing progressive causes and policies throughout her many years of public service, collaborating with colleagues as well as leading (by introducing a health care initiative inspired by the one in California, for example), or yes, taking a principled stand against a large transportation tax that had a lot of questions surrounding it. She has consistently been a staunch supporter of progressive issues like: affordable health care, public education, workers’ rights, fair taxes, LGBTQ rights, social justice, protecting the environment, affordable housing, economic equality, job creation, fair wages. She led the effort to mandate GMO labeling and was not afraid to take on Monsanto’s millions.

These are all issues The Stranger has championed as well. Or used to. Has something changed?

Let’s start with your primary endorsement claim about Chase’s record on single-payer health care. You incorrectly accused Chase of not supporting a bill. You wrote: “Instead of joining on with Senator David Frockt’s better single-payer bill, Chase copied California’s failed version of the bill and then went straight to the Seattle Times with the news that she wanted to bring single-payer to Washington State.”

Incidentally, healthcare activists in California are working on getting “Healthy California” signed into law by the next Democratic governor (if elected), followed by Oregon as “Healthy Oregon,” and here as “Healthy Washington,” creating a tri-state system. So Senator Chase may have exactly the foresight we want in our elected officials.

Also, you accused Chase of not single-handedly forcing through bills, when your own reporter noted that even a bill with a coalition of solid support can be stymied or killed by just one vote. Wrote Smith: “None of the single-payer bills made it out of committee in the last legislative session in Olympia. (Sen. David Frockt’s bill came close, but no cigar thanks in part to Sen. Mark Mullet, the only Democrat on the Senate healthcare committee who didn’t vote YES.) This is bad news.”

Policymaking and governing are rarely a solo act. Yet The Stranger accused Chase of both not doing enough single-handedly and not doing enough in collaboration with others. Which is it?

Public Education

Chase has also been a tireless supporter of public education and has worked to protect WA schools from damaging and failed corporate ed reforms. This led some in your comments section to wonder why Saul Spady was newly listed on your primary election endorsements Editorial Board at the same time you took aim at a champion of public ed. In 2004 and since, the Spady family were big backers of a charter schools push by then-Governor Locke (despite voters having rejected charter schools statewide twice), which Chase helped to stave off. And Saul Spady recently headed the effort to repeal the City Council’s short-lived head tax on larger businesses (like Amazon). Was it merely a coincidence that The Stranger suddenly turned on one of the most progressive pro-public ed legislators in the state at the same time it invited a member of a pro-ed-privatizing family onto its Ed Board?

Public disclosure is a topic where nearly all the state legislators got it wrong this year – including Cindy Ryu, Eric Pettigrew and Frank Chopp. Yet The Stranger endorsed all three of them anyway, and only singled out Chase, who cast the same vote they did. How does The Stranger justify that inconsistency?

And I agree with you that their attempt to modify or clarify the law – an option offered to them by the judge and the state attorney general — did not go far enough to establish true transparency. A taskforce won’t suffice either, and Chase realizes that.

But Chase, who serves on the Sunshine Committee, does have some valid concerns about the abuse of the PRA that can reveal private information of private citizens, and the costs. I have seen the law abused, and private citizens’ emails used politically and without full context, as I outlined in my earlier post from March 2018.

Also, collecting, reviewing and redacting emails carefully takes time and money. At the Seattle School District we had two staffers working full time doing nothing but that. Confidential info still slipped through. State legislators need to find resources for this significant task, and they need to protect the privacy of their constituents. Both must be done.

What I learned from serving in public office for four years (on the school board) and what we see in vivid display on the national stage, is when all is said and done, in order to elect a good legislator, your best bet is to elect a person of good character with a sound moral compass; someone who will side with the powerless and disadvantaged, and stand up to power and corruption; who will take on injustice. That is Chase’s history.

Now more than ever it is clear that character and values matter. We need people with sound ethics and good judgment in office at all levels of government.

Elsewhere in your primary (and general election) endorsements you gave Representative Suzanne DelBene credit for a “symbolic” but failed effort (“While DelBene’s bill was more symbolic than serious (and died in committee), the SECB appreciates deft political symbolism every once in a while.”), yet you don’t grant Chase the same grace. Why not?

Chase is willing to take brave positions that challenge the greater powers that be and isn’t afraid to be a lone voice sometimes. That’s why she has earned the respect and endorsement of fellow progressives like Larry Gossett, Pramila Jayapal, Bob Ferguson, Bob Hasegawa, David Frockt, Gerry Pollet, the King County Democrats, the Washington State Labor Council and the State teacher’s union (WEA). She has also earned a place in FUSE’s Progressive Voters Guide.

$32,250 in polling in the 32nd and 34th legislative districts, reported on 10/15/18. (See PDC records here.) Note, these “services” are listed as “in kind” donations to the WA Realtors PAC. In other words, Stand is apparently laundering its contributions to candidates like Salomon (in the 32nd LD) and Shannon Braddock (in the 34th LD) through the Washington Realtors Association Political Action Committee.

Salomon meanwhile has wiped his PDC record of the $1,000 direct contribution he received from Stand, and has not included their endorsement on his web site, even though he must have actively applied for it in order to receive it.

Unfortunately, your endorsement of Salomon over Chase is just one of the latest Stranger misfires.

You had nothing good to say about Chopp or Pettigrew yet you still endorsed them both. Neither has the progressive credentials of Chase. In fact, as recently as this week in your perennial endorsement of State Rep. Pettigrew you say:

“Eric Pettigrew is a trash legislator who told the SECB in 2014, when he was in his 12th year in office, ‘I don’t know if I have passed any bills this term.’ It’s not clear he has done anything since then, now that he is in his 16th year. He has voted against raising the minimum wage, tried to loosen regulations for predatory payday lenders, voted to shield the state legislature from disclosing public records, and promoted charter schools.”

Why doesn’t The Stranger simply issue no endorsement in races like those? The “lesser of two evils” argument is what leads to decades of mediocre and compromised candidates staying in power.

And now you trash one of the most consistent progressive voices in the state legislature, and support someone backed by privatizers whom you don’t really respect.

The most serious upshot of your flippant endorsements for candidates you don’t really believe in, or who are less qualified, is that truly lesser candidates are making it into the general election, while better ones you could have supported are being left behind.

As a fellow journalist it pains me to see a once decent publication render itself unreliable, sometimes unreadable (the expletives are getting a bit tired, by the way) especially in a one-paper town. I know I’m not the only one to wonder if The Stranger has lost its way.

Chase is the clear choice for reelection in District 32 because she is a tenacious person of conscience who will continue to fight for social justice, the underdog, and isn’t afraid to stand up to bigger forces—or The Stranger Ed Control Board, for that matter. She has been a strong and consistent progressive voice and a people’s representative, not a pawn of developers, corporations or privatizers.

She deserves better from The Stranger. And your readers need better information from you.

6 thoughts on “Open Letter to The Stranger about Its Erratic Endorsements — and Why It Should Endorse Maralyn Chase for State Senate”

Hi Alex, yes it’s true they like to add names to their panel as a joke. But the fact that the Spady family is synonymous with charter schools, and that Saul Spady led the petition charge to undo the head tax, and he apparently has plans to influence next year’s City Council races, makes his presence however symbolic, a little more substantive than some of the other names they have dropped into the masthead in the past. And now that the pro-charter, public ed-privatizers Stand for Children has come out of the shadows of the Realtor’s PAC (Where it had been hiding) with $40,000-70,000 worth of attack ad mailers against Maralyn Chase, it does look like Chase’s staunch support of public ed and opposition to charter schools is one of the driving elements of this election. Clearly corporate ed reformers are one of the groups that want to oust Chase.
As for Spady, interestingly, he and I share an opposition to Prop 1, the City of Seattle’s oversized, fiscally irresponsible preschool/education levy that competes with the District’s upcoming levies. Another story the Stranger completely missed. See: https://www.seattlechannel.org/CityInsideOut/episodes?videoid=x98798

Thank you. THANK YOU for taking the time and energy to call out The Stranger. It was thorough, clear and spoke in Strangeresque English, which I hope makes it resonate with them.

They’ve definitely changed in the years. Sometime if we ever happen to meet, I’ll not only learn more about you but share my Dan Savage stories. I am a friend and ardent supporter of both Senator Maralyn Chase but also her daughter and school board member, Carin Chase. Clearly, I’ve been remiss in discovering you.

Thank you, Justin. As a journalist, I find it particularly disappointing to see local media get more and more narrow and shallow in their coverage. The Stranger is not really offering an alternative anymore. And they’re not doing their homework. It looks like they were fooled in this race, as they have backed the Monsanto/Chevron/Merck/Phrma/Stand for Children candidate over the true progressive. More than one person has told me this town needs a new alternative publication.